I spend a lot of time mulling over the following question: If [insert friend's name here] were a cake, what kind of cake would [he/she] be?
Those of us who enjoy baking celebration cakes understand the weighty significance of this question, with its myriad of factors to be weighed. Taste is an obvious one, our goal being to avoid flavors that exercise the recipient’s gag reflex and focus squarely on those that cause he or she to roll around and salivate like a dog.
With all of my attention, love, and affection (for food, at least) directed at bread baking these days, it might seem that I’ve strayed from my first love, pastry.
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Between the chaos of work trips, half-packed suitcases and endless hours of convention center banter, there was cake. Delicious, unapologetically rich, lavishly frosted cake.
Um, two cakes, actually.
See that picture directly above? The one with the pretty black and white cake? I made that! Me!
I’ve been so entertained all week, watching my friend Eva struggle to restrain herself from spilling the beans as she snuck around Brooklyn planning a suprise birthday party for her boyfriend Gabe. You could see the secret welling up inside her, ready to burst. She told me that by the time the day of the party came around, she restricted conversations to “Hi honey, I love you” for fear that she would let something slip. It was heartwarming and adorable.
Last night a few of us gathered at our place for an extravagant, multi-course dinner cooked by Brian to ring in a new year that we can only hope holds as many good things for us as the one that has just passed. The meal had been built up for weeks and I felt a lot of pressure to deliver an amazing dessert to round it out in the wee morning hours, post ball drop. I thought about it for days and days, but the epiphany for which I was waiting never came. With just hours before our guests arrived, I decided to whip up a celebration cake, because hey, who doesn’t love cake? And celebrations? This one features a rich, yet light and delicious devil’s food cake (made with three types of chocolate!), sandwiched between big fluffy layers of the lightest marshmallow frosting you’ve ever tasted.
